Heights

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

There are so many ways a relationship can be or go wrong. So many reasons and so many motivations that make our connections with those around us far from right, good, or even real. It is something we don’t like to think about, something we don’t like to recognize, but if we are truthful, the reality we must face is that these sub-par relationships are too often the norm and too seldom the exception.

In the movie Heights, this reality is what a group of New Yorkers must face. They each lead separate lives, yet they are also connected. Some are connected by apparent bonds, others by bonds kept hidden. During the 24 hours that the film represents, every connection and intersecting relationship between a young man, his fiancée, her mother, their upstairs neighbor, and a famous photographer is exposed.

At the beginning of the movie, an ex-boyfriend (Mark) reunites with Isabel, Jonathan’s fiancée. They are talking about her wedding, more specifically her ring, and Mark asks her how it feels. Her response—“Heavy.� And more than she knows it, that single word describes what she and those around her will deal with in the hours to come.

For Isabel and Jonathan, their impending life together is exciting, but it also weighs upon them. Isabel struggles with the idea of becoming “just� a wife. She loses her job because of her wedding schedule, has to turn down and dream job for the same reason, and wonders what she is going to do now. As a photographer, she has always sought images depicting moments of value, relationships of true connection, and lives that matter. Yet, putting her camera down after a woman yells at her, all Isabel can think about is how the only meaning she can seem to find is never on her side of the camera.

Her fiancé Jonathan is also having a difficult day. In messages on his answering machine, his past comes back to haunt him. It is a past he has tried bury and hide, a past that threatens the life he has planned out before him. The problem is, his past is making its way back to him on more paths than one. His bigger problem—the past that he has kept hidden is also manifest in his present, directly opposing his life ahead, carefully hidden from those around him, but too alive to keep that way.

Watching from a distance and being drawn into her daughter’s life more than she realizes, Isabel’s mother Diana also carries around a heavy burden. Her husband is cheating on her. It is an act not exactly forbidden by their open marriage, but this time she wishes she could have a relationship that she could depend on, a relationship she knew was actually real. She knows that the connection she has with her husband is not one of love and, inside her, she knows that that is what she truly needs. She argues with her daughter about wedding dresses and about how Isabel never talks to her about Jonathan. And, as she takes her own mental photographs of the little she sees of Isabel, she worries that the life her daughter is heading towards is no more founded in actual love than her own.

From its beginning to its end, Heights is filled with heavy situations and relationships that, sadly, just don’t cut it. Unlike other relationship movies where characters selfishly pursue destructive relationships like a game, the characters in Heights meet the reality of less than optimal relationships with sadness, confusion, loneliness, and a desire for something more, something better, something that is truly good.

The relationships in the movie span a wide range, a range that only begins to reflect the variety of relationships that exist in the real world. Looking at the movie and the real world, many people will automatically categorize relationships, slap on a prefabricated label, and far too hastily condemn “bad� relationships simply because of the categories of “guaranteed� dysfunctionality they occupy. A movie of emotional depth, however, Heights pushes us to recognize that the problems we face in relationships are never as simple as surface generalizations.

In real life, we enter into relationships for many reasons. Sometimes all we want is someone to depend on or someone to depend upon us. Sometimes it is money, status, the right name, the right life, the right image. It is living up to a certain expectations. It is never questioning a specific role we have always felt we have to play. Too often, it is giving into confusion, giving up on anything better, and simply settling for what seems to meet the demands of the moment. Most of the time there is desire, strong desire, attraction, and fun…but as Heights shows us, alone, even desire is not strong enough to hold a relationship together.

The problem with most of the relationships in Heights is that, although they are romantic, although there is desire, none of them seem to truly know love. Few of the characters look out for others; most of them have themselves at the top of their list. Truth is not a requirement and neither is commitment. Often, the only requirement seems to be the inability to believe in anything better. The characters know that love is not there. They show this hole in their lives through their sadness, confusion, loneliness, and longing for something more. They long for something more and something better, because thankfully, beyond confusion, stand-alone desire, and inadequate motivations, there is something better.

While Diane does not exactly have a stellar record with relationships, as a mother, she does not want Isabel to settle for anything but the best. She knows that we need love and she does not want her daughter to live without it. In the same way, God, a father who cares about us more than we can imagine, does not want us to fill our lives with relationships based on and defined by anything other than true love.

Although God created desire within us, desire is only part of the relationships he hopes for us to fill our lives with. In the same way that his love for us is sacrificial, selfless, honest, and patient, in same way that his love seeks, hopes, and perseveres with us through anything and towards lives of meaning, purpose, and value, God desires the bonds we form with those around us to strive for nothing less. God did not fill us with a desire for love for no reason. He filled us with that desire that we might seek genuine love and seek to genuinely love others.

As we seek lives of purpose, meaning, and value, it only makes sense that relationships that are truly good, relationships that are actually based on love, will not just be, but live to pursue, grow, and forward that life of purpose and meaning together, building each other up, helping each other grow, and remembering to share the love that God gives to us every day with those around us. As a man Isabel meets at her mother’s party says to her, neither God nor us wants to look back on our relationships and lives and regretfully wonder, what happened? God wants us to be able to look at our lives and our relationships and know that what is happening is love.

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections